What They Taught Me About Poetry #4

Series Installment #4, Featured: Sally Keith

Sally Keith, one of several outstanding poetry instructors in my Queens University of Charlotte MFA program, taught me many things, but I will always remember her for her advice on lineation. “Look what’s happening to your poems as you go down the page,” Sally said, gesturing with her pen toward a group of my newest poems turned in for her critique.

“OMG,” I replied. “All my poems look like Missouri!” It was true. I had fallen into a rut of beginning poems with shorter lines and increasing line lengths as the poems ran down the page, sometimes pulling back on line length at the very end. Something like this:

          XXXXXXXXXXX
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          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
          XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

More of Sally’s advice: Have some kind of organizing principle in mind. Count syllables or count stresses. Set margins. Do something to regulate the way the poem appears on the page. Set provisional guidelines for yourself and be flexible if the poem wants to go in a different direction. Try different approaches. Line lengths should be intentional, not accidental. And most importantly, read James Longenbach’s little book, The Art of the Poetic Line.

I took Sally’s advice seriously. I read Longenbach’s book, which is excellent and a must read for any poet. I also read Mary Oliver’s advice regarding line length, compared Walt Whitman to Emily Dickenson, and sought nearly everyone’s advice on line beginnings and endings.

I once had the opportunity to share the “all my poems look like Missouri” story with fellow poet Melissa Crowe (director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at UNC Wilmington), who had a similar story. She had a workshop with Billy Collins who, with one deft stroke, drew a vertical line through her poem to indicate where the too-long lines should be chopped off.

Getting back to Sally, I remember she was quick to point out that—unlike formal poetry, where line length and meter are governed by specific rules—poets writing free verse must invent the form for each poem. The poet should thoughtfully decide whether lines and stanzas will be arranged in a very orderly format or words scattered over the page like birdshot on a bullseye.

Stirring Sally’s advice together with that of other poets and instructors, my current approach to lineation usually begins with either a block of prose hand-written in a journal or lines of four or five stresses each if I’m on a keyboard. I try different line lengths as I revise and fine-tune the poem. And I strive to make the poem look reasonably well-organized on the page. It’s important to remember there’s never just one way to do it. I may try one poem with no stanza breaks, then see how it looks in couplets, tercets, quatrains, or irregular stanzas.

What do you do if you have a one-page poem with no stanza breaks? Sometimes that works, but my inclination is to break it up into smaller units, to give the poem breathing room and to give my reader the leisure to pause at certain points during the poem.

Finally, one very practical consideration: put yourself in the editor’s chair for a moment. If someone sends you a poem written in a format that is difficult to process, how far will you go to accommodate the poet’s format? For example, let’s say the journal you edit can accommodate lines up to sixty-five characters long. Anything longer requires that you wrap the line, essentially inserting a “carriage return” like this:

          Now we see the eclipse again from Texas, announcers adding their
                    whoops and hollers

Maybe this line is the only one that bumps against the publication’s format restrictions, but what if many or all the lines in a poem do that? Some editors will go the extra mile to work with a poet on reformatting the poem to fit a journal’s page size restrictions, but many editors simply don’t have the time for this and will reject the submission. Why take this chance? Poets are usually better off making sure the poem fits the journal’s page before they submit.

I learned much from Sally Keith and will always be grateful for her wisdom and guidance—and for igniting my desire to structure my poems so they don’t all look like Missouri.

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Sally Keith graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2000 and holds a B.A. from Bucknell. She has published four collections of poetry, most recently River House (Milkweed Editions 2015). A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Keith has been awarded fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Pushcart Prize, and the Denver Quarterly’s Lynda Hull Award.